Recording video and/or television content in digital formats on hard disk drives for subsequent use has become increasingly common. Digital video recorder (DVR) systems are example recorders that record content in digital formats on a hard disk drive using, for example, Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG)-2 compression. In a DVR system, the producer, i.e., the hardware generating the content to be stored, manages the flow of transport data to the consumer that handles recording. If there is an overflow condition reported back to the producer, the producer can slow down the flow of transport data, stop generating content, and/or drop excess data. Furthermore, a DVR system generates index records containing position references for the picture start codes in the recorded transport stream. The producer will drop excess transport data to maintain accurate start code position references.
However, in order to maintain continuous functionality, the producer in existing DVR systems require feedback from the consumer to identify when an overflow condition has occurred, so that the producer can respond by managing the output of data and dropping excess data. During the recording process sometimes the client device, or more specifically the storage device, becomes sluggish in response to the receipt of data resulting in a data overflow condition.
The existing solutions for DVR recording have less than optimal results, such as a continued sluggish system while waiting for feedback, data loss during recording, a hung system (e.g., if there is a storage device (Hard Disk—HDD) failure) or the like. Improved techniques for handling a sluggish client device or faulty storage device are desirable.
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The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.